“Alerts pilots to inflight situations that are potentially disorientating by describing how this physiological phenomenon influences and often distorts flying judgments. It suggests that when physical senses are at variance with cockpit instruments, you should not randomly hit buttons.”

Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

The vestibular system, in most mammals, is the sensory system that provides the leading contribution about the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of the inner ear in most mammals, situated in the vestibulum in the inner ear… As movements consist of rotations and translations, the vestibular system comprises two components: the semicircular canal system, which indicate rotational movements; and the otoliths, which indicate linear accelerations. The vestibular system sends signals primarily to the neural structures that control eye movements, and to the muscles that keep an animal upright. The projections to the former provide the anatomical basis of the vestibulo-ocular reflex, which is required for clear vision; and the projections to the muscles that control posture are necessary to keep an animal upright.

The brain uses information from the vestibular system in the head and from proprioception throughout the body to understand the body’s dynamics and kinematics (including its position and acceleration) from moment to moment…

The semicircular canal system detects rotational movements. The semicircular canals are its main tools to achieve this detection.

Structure

Since the world is three-dimensional, the vestibular system contains three semicircular canals in each labyrinth. They are approximately orthogonal (right angles) to each other, and are called the horizontal (or lateral), the anterior semicircular canal (or superior) and the posterior (or inferior) semicircular canal. Anterior and posterior canals may be collectively called vertical semicircular canals.

Movement of fluid within the horizontal semicircular canal corresponds to rotation of the head around a vertical axis (i.e. the neck), as when doing a pirouette.

The anterior and posterior semicircular canals detect rotations of the head in the sagittal plane (as when nodding), and in the frontal plane, as when cartwheeling. Both anterior and posterior canals are orientated at approximately 45° between frontal and sagittal planes.

The movement of fluid pushes on a structure called the cupula, which contains hair cells that transduce the mechanical movement to electrical signals…

Push-pull systems

The canals are arranged in such a way that each canal on the left side has an almost parallel counterpart on the right side. Each of these three pairs works in a push-pull fashion: when one canal is stimulated, its corresponding partner on the other side is inhibited, and vice versa.

This push-pull system makes it possible to sense all directions of rotation: while the right horizontal canal gets stimulated during head rotations to the right (Fig 2), the left horizontal canal gets stimulated (and thus predominantly signals) by head rotations to the left.

Vertical canals are coupled in a crossed fashion, i.e. stimulations that are excitatory for an anterior canal are also inhibitory for the contralateral posterior, and vice versa…

APOCALYPSE fears as ‘Italian Nostradamus’ prophecy of snow in Puglia village comes TRUE

TWO days of consecutive snow at a European town has sparked warnings of the end of the world, following an apocalyptic prophecy from the ‘Italian Nostradamus’.
Matteo Tafuri, who lived between 1492 and 1582, warned centuries ago that two days of consecutive snow in the resort town of Salento would lead to Armageddon.

He said: “Salento of palm trees and mild south wind, snowy Salento but never after the touch. Two days of snow, two flashes in the sky, I know the world ends, but I do not yearn.”

The diary was hidden in his room and only discovered recently by researchers, who also uncovered the ominous warning.
It comes just days after tears were spotted emerging from the eyes of a painting of the Virgin Mary in Macedonia – a spectacle which has also been linked to the end of the world.